Impatient Procrastinators Visual Effects.

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Good eye. I didn't use any SSS on this shot. I've been debating on whether or not I can fake it... but I don't think I can. I'll add some SSS in the next render which shouldn't take too long. SSS only adds about two extra seconds to my render times which is about 1.32 seconds with shadows and AO. I didn't render out separate passes for this clip but I'm thinking that I should for better control. Oh... and there's no specularity on this shot either. I did want to show part of the brain with dried blood around the skin but I'm still thinking about it because I freestyled the sculpt. I wasn't sure which direction I wanted to go with it, so I just imported the mesh into Sculptris and started sculpting and moving things around.I know that I do need to blend the model skin texture better with the actual skin from the live footage, that'll only take me a few minutes in Gimp.The match move or "Object tracking" was actually really easy. I did have to do some manual work and track every marker one at a time but it didn't take long because Blender is super fast.Gotta run some errands right now so I'll get back to work on this soon.

Do you have any bump or normal mapping going on? If so, I'd suggest increasing its intensity a bit, or adding it if you don't have it.To help with speeding up compositing and blending textures, I would look into procedural mask generation. Keep in mind, no idea how you do this in Blender, but maybe useful.In Max, I would create a black and white gradient ramp and clamp it to the gradient only appears on the edges of the face that need to blend with the footage. Then I would mix a few procedural noises to naturally break up the edge. Render it out 100% self illuminated (so no shadows or lighting effects it) as a separate pass. This just eliminates the need to create and hand animate masks when compositing, and means you reduce the risk of getting floating/jittering masks.

Thanks INF. I did figure out how to make masks for the edge of the mesh in Gimp, very helpful BTW. There isn't a whole lot of info about using SSS in Blender so this is what I've got so far after two and a half or so hours. It does add five seconds and not two seconds to the render time... still pretty good. I do have a bump map set to max but I'll tweak the bump map some more in Gimp per your advise... needs more contrast between the black and white pixels I think, and less grey. I also made a specular map which kinda does make the image look a bit better. Not perfect but it's looking way better. Thanks again for the advice. Very cool. [IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img507/8257/capturezkm.png[/IMG]

Looking much better! The SSS really helps to remove the plasticity. I think your spec is incorrect though. At the moment, the face replacement looks like it is wet. It appears that your spec is actually reflections? If so, that's good because it is the proper way to do it (and how it works in real life):) The thing to keep in mind with skin is that although it can often look very reflective, the reflections are always heavily blurred (look at her shoulders for example). This is due to the scattering of the light because the surface of the skin has a lot of micro bumps. Also by looking at her shoulder, you can see that reflections on skin a most visible when the surface isn't pointing towards you. Known as Fresnel reflections, I'm not sure how Blender deals with it, but definitely look into it. Rather than blurring your reflection map, it will look much more realistic and physically accurate if you blur the reflections surface themselves. This is often called glossiness and simulates micro bumps/details. You may already be utilizing it, and if so I would recommend increasing the effect. Your render times will increase but that's where you need to decide to optimize for realism or speed. If you use blurry reflections, you may have to drop down the intensity of your spec map as well. Blurring the reflections will cause highlights to spread over the surface too much, and as such may appear too bright.Play around a bit more with the SSS though, it appears much too green. Look at her ear and you will notice that even in these lighting conditions the light scattered under the skin is still a red/orange color. Don't stress too much about overall colors matching the live action plate directly, as most of that can be solved quicker with simple color correction during compositng, so long as you have the needed render passes/elements. How things are at the moment though, it would be hard to effect just the slight green SSS without effecting the color of the skin as a whole as they are very close in terms of color values and temperature.Hope that helps out, makes me really wish I had more time to do personal works

Oh man... those poor people. Thanks though... I'm actually learning a lot just, from ITF's tips and advice on 3D organic "flesh" shaders & materials. He's correct, Sub surface Scattering is so freaking awesome and really makes a difference in the renders. He's got a good eye. The pics in your link got me thinking... I might tweak the model a bit more.That will have to wait a little while though. A childhood friend of mine was killed in a hit and run two weeks ago. I think that I was in shock or something because it's just now sinking in that he's gone so it's gonna take me a while to deal with it. You never know though... I might just keep working, to keep my mind occupied.

Sorry to hear that, budski. Lost a very close friend myself earlier in the year (difference circumstances) and it's not an easy thing to deal with. Sometimes it feels like you're never going to get over it, and other times you feel guilty for not feeling upset.Look after yourself! Working on projects can sometimes help to focus the mind, I find.

Have fun Spydurhank and really sorry for your loss mate. On a separate side your Blender skills are off the chart. Can't wait to see how you incorporate this stuff into HF2. The kung-fu is strong All the bestJay

Thanks Jay, I really appreciate it. Now that you mention it... I'm wondering if it'll be possible to get a decent Sub Surface Scattering type effect for organic meshes in HFU2... if not, I'm sure that there's gotta be a way to fake it. Hmm... it's really got me thinking now, and I can't wait to get my hands on HFU2.

This is my first test using HitFilm2 Ultimate with Mocha. It was a little awkward at first but the learning curve is very short. Mocha is actually pretty damned good at 3D camera tracking... although it is a little slow for my taste. With a little more work... you can get really good looking renders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ChRyg-ueAc

I agree with Matthias, I saw this yesterday and gave it a like on YT. Wanted to comment on it but my HTC wouldn't let me :-(I really like how the shadows play on the model. Can't wait to get started on HF2 this weekend.Great work dude.!

Thanks Stop Motion Man, Simon & Orange Pekoe. Really glad you guys liked this test A bit off topic and I should have posted this question elsewhere but... Today I noticed something In HF2U... yesterday I started modelling a U.S. air force Drone in Blender. Blender uses quads when you model but, I did a bit of sculpting on the model and ended up with some tri faces... not a whole lot but there are some on the mesh, anyway I exported the model as an .obj and imported it into HF2U. When I first imported the mesh and took a look at the faces... all of the quad faces were converted into tri faces. Is this a glitch or is this just how HF2U handles model imports?I'm just wondering because I know that the less faces you have on your mesh, the faster it will render so, if you have tris instead of quads... you have double the number of faces which obviously doubles your render time. Like I said... just wondering.

Nice work spydurhank Thought I'd jump in and try answer some of your questions.[quote]Blender uses quads when you model but, I did a bit of sculpting on the model and ended up with some tri faces... not a whole lot but there are some on the mesh, anyway I exported the model as an .obj and imported it into HF2U. When I first imported the mesh and took a look at the faces... all of the quad faces were converted into tri faces. Is this a glitch or is this just how HF2U handles model imports?[/quote]A quick and easy was to check would be to re-import your model back into blender. One thing to keep in mind is that when exporting an OBJ, the model may be automatically triangulated. Generally this is an option you can turn off, so check your export settings.[quote]I'm just wondering because I know that the less faces you have on your mesh, the faster it will render so, if you have tris instead of quads... you have double the number of faces which obviously doubles your render time. Like I said... just wondering.[/quote]3d software may display an object as Quads, but when it comes time to render, the mesh will actually be triangulated (though you won't notice this in your final render because the mesh will use the original normal angles from the quad mesh). While this does increase your face count, it doesn't make a difference with speed because it is unavoidable. It does this because triangles are the simplest way a surface can be represented in 3d.Where realtime 3d engines are concerned, triangles are better. Games use triangles, which wouldn't be logical if your theory about triangles being slower to render was true by using triangulated models, this actually cuts down on processing time by not needing the computer to divide polygons into triangles before displaying them.As for what HF2 uses internally, I'm not too sure. It may triangulate meshes on import, or it may display quads fine and it is simply an export issue like I mentioned above. Sadly, I'm only on a quick break from work so don't have time to check it out myself :P Cheers,Daniel

Thanks ITF. Blender does have the option to convert quads into tris during export but I always leave that option unchecked. I'll try re importing the mesh into Blender and see what happens. Thanks a ton man.

To confirm what ITF says, if you have the option of exporting a triangulated mesh it will yield better performance in HF2. That's according to one of the tech guys here. Personally, I have no idea what you're talking about. :P

To confirm what ITF says, if you have the option of exporting a triangulated mesh it will yield better performance in HF2. That's according to one of the tech guys here. Personally, I have no idea what you're talking about. :P

Well... I imported the same model back into Blender and it was made out of quads, so that answers that question. I'll make a quad version and a tri version... just to see how HitFilm handles the two, or to see if there's a difference. I'm just used to working with quads. I can deal with tris because it doesn't really slow down my computer... I've just got this whole "Gotta be faster" thing in my head that I can't let go. I need that fast render... need it, want it, gotta have it.

Guys... dude... uh... if anyone's interested... Gimp 2.8 was just released, well... it may have been just released. I'm not really sure because I haven't looked in a while. But I did just download it and am giving it a try. It has a single window mode for any Photoshop users. Looks pretty good so far and seems stable. http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html